She turns to the camera and smiles a strained smile. "You wouldn't believe the nasty crap that my kids like to eat. Cashew and broccoli pancakes, muffins dipped in hot fudge, Go-Gurt. So you can imagine my relief when —"

Four cherubic children ranging from 3 to 15 years and a large shaggy dog race into the kitchen and start to chase each other around the island. The mother drains about a half-liter of Turkish coffee in a single go and continues:

The motivation for the new cereal was simple: a vehicle to test MegaConglomoCorp's favorite chemical, 5-chloro-2-methyl-4-isothiazolin-3-one, on the children of America. It had done such a good job of cleaning the nation's hair that it seemed only natural that it would do a good job on their stomachs, too.

There was only one problem, though, which was that chloromethylisothiazolinone has what could be charitably described as a gamey flavor, and uncharitably as fucking awful. So it was covered up with enough sugar to choke a 10-pound hummingbird, and then that was covered up with enough fiber to choke a Persian rug. That way it could be advertised as being good for you, and any malnutrition the little darlings managed to stuff down their traps would stuff itself out the other end within an hour anyway.

Since mascots are known to be instrumental in hocking sugar bombs to the kiddie set, a lot of thought was put into this aspect of the marketing. Early forerunners included Junkie, a bullfrog with a sugar habit, Dozer, a lovable carnie with an overbite and a candy shotgun, and Uncle Panic himself, a nearly-rabid octogenarian with a wheelchair and a terrible attitude (catch phrase: "Get the hell off my lawn!"). However, all of these eventually lost out to Grundle, the skateboarding, mulletted polar bear with a baaaaad attitude, thus proving once and for all that children's marketing is thoroughly out of touch with reality.

Unsuccessful promotions attempted within the first year and the reasons for their failures:

A suburban house party. Late at night. Incongruously, despite the fact that this is obviously some sort of keg stand, with trash littered all up and down the block, and cars scattered liberally and at odd angles on lawns, all of the attendees are between the ages of 10 and 14.

Wild guitar bends, shots of kids skateboarding down and up (!) roofs, some tween upside-down draining a beer bong full of "strawberry" Kool-Aid. Zoom through the hallways of the house across all sorts of scenes of kids cooler than you having more fun than you to the kitchen, where four of the coolest, most ethnically-balanced kids of all are sitting around a table. The boys are ultra-cool looking, with their hair arranged just so, wraparound sunglasses, and screen-printedT-shirts with images of Major General Mills' other brands. The girls are ultra-slutty looking, despite the fact that the closest they have ever come to having breasts was that time their parents took them to a KFCdrive through.